Fresh face for Assembly Dist. 1

Wednesday

Dec 19, 2012 at 10:54 AMDec 19, 2012 at 10:58 AM

After taking 63.8 percent of the Siskiyou vote in November, first-time Assembly member Brian Dahle is confident that his experiences in agriculture and with the Lassen County Board of Supervisors will help him take local issues to the state level.

David Smith

After taking 63.8 percent of the Siskiyou vote in November, first-time Assembly member Brian Dahle is confident that his experiences in agriculture and with the Lassen County Board of Supervisors will help him take local issues to the state level.

In an interview Dec. 12, Dahle said he believes that he will bring to the California Assembly a greater understanding of how state programs are implemented at the local level – including any problems that county governments might have “where the rubber meets the road.”

Asked what that means for Dist. 1, Dahle said that as a third-generation farmer he has first-hand experience with many of the environmental issues in Siskiyou County, including Total Maximum Daily Loads, the Klamath dam agreements and forest management. On the latter issues, Dahle said that he is opposed to the removal of the dams and that he would like to see fire issues in the national forests addressed with ground-level management of tree density through planned thinning projects.

In addition to natural resources, Dahle said he has a major focus on balancing the state budget, a task for which he feels suited after helping Lassen County become debt-free. Asked for a specific fix to the state budget problems, he said that he will likely look at reforming the pension program, which, according to a 2011 Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research paper, constitutes approximately 5-6 percent of California’s General Fund budget, or about $5 billion.

Dahle said that another target will be regulation of businesses – regulations he feels need to be cut back to allow businesses to operate more freely. While specific regulations were not discussed, he did note that he feels that one of the biggest problems is the number of regulations business owners face.

With a multitude of issues across Dist. 1’s large square footage, Dahle said he feels he can still keep in touch with constituents to hear their concerns during his time in office. “I’ve lived it,” Dahle said of life at the rural level, “and people respect that.”